The Secret of You and Me - Melissa Lenhardt Page 0,31
smiled, and I saw that fucking dimple.
I found many men attractive, including Charlie. But, I didn’t want to fuck any of them, including Charlie. No matter how hard I tried, Charlie had never made me burn with desire like Nora had, or like the woman I met a year earlier in a hotel bar and had given a fake name, knowing on some deep level where we would end up. I’d admitted the truth to myself the next morning. Declaring to the world I was gay was something else altogether.
Charlie walked out of the bathroom, naked. Nothing. “I saw your mom today.”
“Lucky you.”
“She was fishing about why you aren’t going to church anymore.”
“I go every Sunday.”
The dresser drawer slid open noiselessly, and he pulled out a pair of boxer briefs. “You know what she means.”
“Charlie, I went to church three times a week for thirty-five years. Over five thousand times. I could skip church for the next one hundred years and still average out to a day a week, which is more than most people can say.”
Charlie stopped adjusting his package for maximum effect. He could have been a fence post for all it did for me. “You’ve done the math?”
I rolled off the bed, felt his semen trickle down my leg. “I’m done with church three times a week. I talked to Jesus about it. He said it was okay.” I closed the bathroom door behind me and turned on the shower.
My mother’s reaction to discovering me and Nora, extreme as it was, had made me fear the wider world, and how they would see me, and how I saw myself. Seducing Charlie might have saved me from conversion camp, but it didn’t save me from sitting between my parents in the pew of Lynchfield Baptist Church every Sunday (fifth pew from the front, far right side), and hearing about the sins of homosexuality, almost weekly. It became such a familiar theme with Brother Smithfield I wondered if my parents had talked to him, prayed for my mortal soul with him. But, no. My parents would rather die than admit my sin to anyone in Lynchfield, even a pastor who was known for kindness and discretion. One Sunday, the August after Nora left, I was distracted by the recent discovery I was pregnant and barely listening to Brother Smithfield. He slammed his Bible down on the pulpit, stomped his cowboy-booted foot and raised his voice. Theatrics weren’t unusual; Brother Smithfield screamed, stomped and banged the pulpit on the regular. When I looked up at him, he stared right at me and said, And Moses cried unto the Eternal One, saying, Heal her now, O God, I beseech thee.
He held my gaze for a moment more and I understood. It explained why he returned to the same themes of God’s forgiveness and understanding, why he dwelt on the sins of the flesh, that the emotions he showed on the pulpit had less to do with his love of God than with his struggle with his belief he was worthy of His love.
When I showed up on Brother Smithfield’s doorstep the following morning, he let me in without a word. Before I confessed to him, he placed his hand on my head and prayed for me, and I felt the love of God wash over me, and I thought yes, this is right. This will fix me. God will fix me.
I remember Brother Smithfield’s dry, papery hand holding mine while I told him everything—about Nora, my mother, Charlie, the baby growing inside me—the thrum of energy I felt coursing between us. He nodded sympathetically and listened until my mind couldn’t form another word, and we sat in silence for so long I began to hope it wasn’t forgiveness that Brother Smithfield would offer, but what I wanted to hear: God doesn’t make mistakes. Be yourself, Sophie. Grasp happiness. God’s love is unconditional.
“You are an abomination, Sophia, and will surely burn in hell unless you spend an hour a day on your knees in prayer. Pray God will relieve you of these vile urges, pray Charlie will never know how you’ve manipulated him into a marriage, pray God will work on you, change your personality into one of subservience to him, and your husband. And pray your child will never know how he was brought into the world.”
I’d done it. Everything Brother Smithfield said. For years I prayed fervently to change, for forgiveness, for my secret to stay hidden. It worked, for